Hey, ~Sirepseh~ *smile*,if you type in "Samhain" in the SuperSearch box, you'll find several threads which have some good suggestions and links in them for all kinds of info. You can link to one of the threads, directly, by clicking this: With Samhain Approaching, does anyone?

One of my favourites that my daughters learned in school is in Rise Up Singing, but I gave my copy ot my dad, so I don't have the name of it. I know someone here will know which one I am talking about. It starts out, "Who were the witches/Where did they come from/Maybe your great-great-grandmama was one/Witches are wise, wise women, they say/There's a little witch in every woman today"

Kewl! If you don't already have it, the CD or cassette, "A Circle Is Cast" by the women's a capella group, Libana, has wonderful songs on it and they also have a songbook to go with it. I would also recommend their second CD, "Fire Within."

Ladyslipper Music, which is a nonprofit to promote music of and by women has Libana's stuff as well as other really great CD, etc. You can visit their site at www.ladyslipper.org

Have fun and don't worry about forgetting to search. It's a lot of fun to have a new one (thread) now and then, anyway, esp. when there are more newbies who share.*BG*

Shave the Monkey do a good song ' The Witchfinder General', very haunting, very good (as is all their stuff). I think it's on one of their CDs 'The Unseelie Court' I think. I'm pretty sure they've got a website. John

Hesperis , have a look at Animaterras stuff they do some great wide ranging "religious" acapella music including an incredible song called "Until the dark time ends" that is very Samhainish, Allison is contactable thru the PMs... at Animaterra

I have just opened a new page on my website giving a list of traditional Songs and Stories for Halloween and Samhain. These are mostly in English, but it is part of the wider reconstruction of the Indo-European religion. There is also a link to a page that gives the lyrics to most of the songs so that you can sing them if you like. I hope that you will find it interesting. The link is http://pierce.yolasite.com/hallsongs or

Just uploaded a couple of songs for Hallowe'en onto our Mysace Page : A Woodcutter's Song (Logs to Burn) (words sourced from The White Goddess & elsewhere though the tune is our own) and a Dark Ambient rendering A Souling Song (sourced from Jack Langstaff) replete with spectral ambiences field recorded in the church of Ss Peter & Paul in Salle, Norfolk. This is part of our ongoing reconstruction of Indo-European folk music!

The Castleford Ladies' Magical Circle meets tonight, In an upstairs aspidistra'd room that's lit by candlelight, Where Elizabeth Jones and Lily O'Grady And three or four more married ladies Practice every week unspeakable pagan rites.

Dressed in their Sunday coats and their flowerpot hats, Respectable middle-aged ladies - running to fat, at that - There's Elizabeth Jones and Lily O'Grady And three or four more married ladies, Each with a Woolworth's broomstick and a tabby cat.

But they don't waste time with a ouija board or a seance now and again, no. None of your wittering, twittering, petty poltergeists for them. No, Elizabeth Jones and Lily O'Grady And three or four more married ladies Prefer to be tickled by the whiskery chins of bogey men.

Their husbands potter at snooker down the club, Unaware of the devilish jiggery-poke and rub-a-dub-dub, While Elizabeth Jones and Lily O'Grady And three or four more married ladies Are frantically dancing naked for Beelzebub.

And after the witches' picnic and the devil's grog, After their savage pantings, their hysterical leap-frog, well, Elizabeth Jones and Lily O'Grady And three or four more married ladies Go back home for cocoa and the Epilogue.

So be careful how you go of a Saturday night: If you see a little old lady passing by, it very well might be Elizabeth Jones or Lily O'Grady Or one of those satanical ladies. Their eyes are wild and bright, their cheekbones all alight. Don't go where they invite, Because the Castleford Ladies' Magical Circle meets tonight.

Cheers, VT - we pulled that from a forthcoming volume of John Barleycorn Reborn though now I'm beginning to have my doubts! I'd love to bring you & CS and a few others together for a fine chorale on such songs one day...

Strawhead arranged this for a play in Joyce Morris's series of productions for Blackpool College Theatre. Don't know if they ever recorded it. We re-arranged it for one of the "Amounderness Tales" productions by Fleetwood's Onward Theatre Company. I'm assuming that Gregg Butler set his own tune to it.

The Editor thought it incumbent on him to insert some old pieces on the popular superstition concerning witches, hobgoblins, fairies, and ghosts. The last of these make their appearance in most of the tragical ballads; and in the following songs will be found some description of the former.

It is true, this song of the Witches, falling from the learned pen of Ben Jonson, is rather an extract from the various incantations of classical antiquity, than a display of the opinions of our own vulgar. But let it be observed, that a parcel of learned wiseacres had just before busied themselves on this subject, in compliment to King James I., whose weakness on this head is well known; and these had so ransacked all writers, ancient and modern, and so blended and kneaded together the several superstitions of different times and nations, that those of genuine English growth could no longer be traced out and distinguished.

By good luck the whimsical belief of fairies and goblins could furnish no pretences for torturing our fellow-creatures, and therefore we have this handed down to us pure and unsophisticated.

1 WITCH.

"I HAVE been all day looking after A raven feeding upon a quarter: And, soone as she turn'd her beak to the south, I snatch'd this morsell out of her mouth."

2 WITCH.

"I have beene gathering wolves haires, The madd dogges foames, and adders eares; The spurging of a dead man's eyes: And all since the evening starre did rise."

3 WITCH.

"I last night lay all alone O' the ground, to heare the mandrake grone; And pluckt him up, though he grew full low: And, as I had done, the cocke did crow."

4 WITCH.

"And I ha' beene chusing out this scull From charnell houses that were full; From private grots, and publike pits: And frighted a sexton out of his wits."

5 WITCH.

"Under a cradle I did crepe By day; and, when the childe was a-sleepe At night, I suck'd the breath; and rose, And pluck'd the nodding nurse by the nose.

6 WITCH.

"I had a dagger: what did I with that? Killed an infant to have his fat. A piper it got at a church-ale. I bade him again blow wind i' the taile."

7 WITCH.

"A murderer yonder was hung in chaines; The sunne and the wind had shrunke his veins: I bit off a sinew; I clipp'd his haire; I brought off his ragges, that danc'd i' the ayre."

8 WITCH.

"The scrich-owles egges and the feathers blacke, The bloud of the frogge, and the bone in his backe I have been getting; and made of his skin A purset, to keepe Sir Cranion in."

9 WITCH.

"And I ha' beene plucking (plants among) Hemlock, henbane, adders-tongue, Night-shade, moone-wort, libbards-bane; And twise by the dogges was like to be tane."

10 WITCH.

"I from the jaw's of a gardiner's bitch Did snatch these bones, and then leap'd the ditch: Yet went I back to the house againe, Kill'd the blacke cat, and here is the braine."

11 WITCH.

"I went to the toad, breedes under the wall, I charmed him out, and he came at my call; I scratch'd out the eyes of the owle before; I tore the batts wing: what would you have more?"

DAME.

"Yes: I have brought, to helpe your vows, Horned poppie, cypresse boughes, The fig-tree wild, that grows on tombes, And juice, that from the larch-tree comes, The basiliskes bloud, and the vipers skin:-- And now our orgies let's begin."

I have updated the web page giving a list of traditional Songs and Stories for Halloween and Samhain. These are mostly in English, but it is part of the wider reconstruction of the Indo-European religion. There is also a link to a page that gives the lyrics to most of the songs so that you can sing them if you like. I hope that you will find it interesting. The link is http://pierce.yolasite.com/hallsongs or just pierce.yolasite.com/hallsongs or Songs to Celebrate Halloween and Samhain whichever link works, if any.